Putting Anti-Indian Violence in Context: The Case of the Great Lakes Chippewas of Wisconsins

The Chippewas of Northern Wisconsin continue to experience a peculiarly American form of apartheid, characterized by segregation, discrimination, cultural imperialism, and everyday violence. While the blatant stigmatization, disempowerment, and violence reached its modern day zenith in the spear fishing conflict of the 1980s and 1990s, ongoing patterns of racism and violence remain embedded in the culture. The purpose of this paper, then, is to explore the ways in which contemporary patterns of oppression continue to shape the climate in which anti–American Indian violence occurs in this particular region.

Native Americans across the country continue to experience myriad and interrelated forms of economic, political, and social oppression. This is evident in practices ranging from negative cultural imaging, treaty abrogations, and even violence. Yet such efforts have not gone unchallenged. In fact, recent years have seen extensive resistance on the part of American Indians, as they reassert their remaining treaty rights around land, resources, and self-governance. That American society at large is not ready for this relatively novel activism has been apparent in episodes of retaliatory violence intended to reassert Western control of American Indians and their resources. In what follows we examine recent experiences of Wisconsin Chippewas as an illustration of this cycle. In particular, we provide an overview of the oppressive conditions in this part of the nation, followed by consideration of recent American Indian activism and resistance in the region. Finally, we trace the patterns of reactionary violence that have met such efforts at self-assertion.

A lingering and crucial element of Native American reactions to genocidal and ethnocidal practices that have characterized white–American Indian relations has been continued demands for sovereignty and self-determination. Frequently, this has been manifest in the invocation of rights claims—specifically, treaty, land, fishing, and resource rights. However, it has been precisely these demands that have, in turn, initiated anti-Indian violence (Ryÿser 1992, 1993; Grossman 1999). This is perhaps not an unexpected or surprising development, since hegemony and the practices of insurgency are inherently dynamic and unstable. It is the case that

the insurgent process is one whereby subordinate group members introduce a particular tactic, the dominant group, over time, adjusts, counteracts, and often neutralizes that particular subordinate group strategy. . . . The end result of the struggle is often a reshaping of the existing stratification structure.

(Roscigno 1994:112)

While we would argue that there is no ultimate "end result" of this ongoing process, Roscigno's point is well taken: counter-hegemonic threats to the established racial order are consistently met with counter mobilization on the part of the traditionally dominant groups.

Far from granting Indian nations political sovereignty, the history of treaties with the U.S. federal government further diminished the identities, homelands, and freedom of the Indigenous peoples. As Ryÿser (1993) expresses it, "Indian land rights are paradoxically the strongest and weakest link in the mosaic of land rights in the United States." Too often, Native nations in the 1900s ceded great expanses of land in return for reserved rights to fishing, hunting, and other traditional ritual and subsistence activities both on and off reservation lands. Moreover, in spite of such treaties, local and state officials from the 1960s to the 1980s consistently acted in ways that which restricted those rights. In Washington, Oregon, and Wisconsin, to name just three such states, game wardens and state legislatures conspired to abrogate resource treaties, thereby dramatically restricting Native access to fish and game (Institute for Natural Progress 1992).

Native American activist Ramona Bennett aptly expresses the Native American response to this pattern of treaty abrogation:

At this time, our people were fighting to preserve their last treaty right—the right to fish. We lost our land base. There was no game in the areA. . . . We're dependent not just economically but culturally [End Page...